Albrecht Dürer, an incredibly gifted and versatile German artist of the Renaissance period, was one of the strongest artistic and commercial centers in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He was known as a brilliant painter, draftsman, theorist and writer, though his first and probably greatest artistic impact was in the medium of printmaking.
Background
Albrecht Dürer was born on May 21, 1471 in Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire (present-day Nuremberg, Germany) into the family of Albrecht Dürer the Elder, a successful Hungarian goldsmith, and Barbara (Holper) Dürer. His parents had at least fourteen and possibly as many as eighteen children with Albrecht being the third child and second son. One of Albrecht's brothers, Hans Dürer, was also a painter and trained under him. Endres Dürer, another of Dürer's brothers, stepped in their father's shoes, took over his business and became a master goldsmith.
Education
After a few years of school, Dürer began learning the basics of goldsmithing and drawing under the mentorship of his father. Despite the fact, that Albrecht's father wanted him to pursue goldsmithing, he showed such a precocious talent in drawing, that he began his studies under the guidance of Michael Wolgemut in 1486.
Career
During 1493 or 1494, Dürer was in Strasbourg for a short time, returning again to Basel to design several book illustrations. An early masterpiece from this period is a self-portrait with a thistle painted on parchment in 1493.
At the end of May 1494, Dürer came back to Nuremberg. In the autumn of 1494, Dürer seems to have undertaken his first journey to Italy, where he remained until the spring of 1495. A number of bold landscape watercolours, dealing with subjects from the Alps of the southern Tirol, were made during this journey and are among Dürer's most beautiful creations.
Dürer's secular, allegorical and frequently self-enamoured paintings of this period are often either adaptations of Italian models or entirely independent creations, that breathe the free spirit of the new age of the Renaissance. The painter adapted the figure of Hercules from Pollaiuolo's "The Rape of Deianira" for his painting "Hercules and the Birds of Stymphalis". A purely mythological painting in the Renaissance tradition, Hercules is exceptional among Dürer's works. The centre panel from the "Dresden Altarpiece", which Dürer painted in about 1498, is stylistically similar to Hercules and betrays influences of Mantegna. In most of Dürer's free adaptations the additional influence of the more lyrical, older painter Giovanni Bellini, with whom Dürer had become acquainted in Venice, can be seen.
Italian influences were slower to take hold in Dürer's graphics, than in his drawings and paintings. Strong late Gothic elements dominate the visionary woodcuts of his Apocalypse series (the "Revelation of St. John"), published in 1498. The woodcuts in this series display emphatic expression, rich emotion and crowded, frequently overcrowded, compositions. The same tradition influences the earliest woodcuts of Dürer's "Great Passion" series, also from about 1498. Nevertheless, the fact, that Dürer was adopting a more modern conception, a conception, inspired by classicism and humanism, is indicative of his basically Italian orientation. The woodcuts "Samson and the Lion" (c. 1497) and "Hercules Conquering Cacus" and many prints from the woodcut series "The Life of the Virgin" (c. 1500-1510) have a distinct Italian flavour.
Dürer's graphics eventually influenced the art of the Italian Renaissance, that had originally inspired his own efforts. His painterly style, however, continued to vacillate between Gothic and Italian Renaissance until about 1500. Then his restless striving finally found definite direction. He seems clearly to be on firm ground in the penetrating half-length portraits of Oswolt Krel, in the portraits of three members of the aristocratic Tucher family of Nürnberg - all dated 1499 - and in the "Portrait of a Young Man" of 1500. In 1500, Dürer painted another self-portrait, that is a flattering, Christ-like portrayal.
During this period of consolidation in Dürer's style, the Italian elements of his art were strengthened by his contact with Jacopo de' Barbari, a minor Venetian painter and graphic artist, who was seeking a geometric solution to the rendering of human proportions; it is perhaps due to his influence, that Dürer began, around 1500, to grapple with the problem of human proportions in true Renaissance fashion. Initially, the most concentrated result of his efforts was the great engraving "Adam and Eve" (1504), in which he sought to bring the mystery of human beauty to an intellectually calculated ideal form. In all aspects, Dürer's art was becoming strongly classical. One of his most significant classical endeavours is his painting "Altar of the Three Kings" (1504), which was executed with the help of pupils.
In the autumn of 1505, Dürer made a second journey to Italy, where he remained until the winter of 1507. Once again, he spent most of his time in Venice. Of the Venetian artists, Dürer now most admired Bellini, the leading master of Venetian early Renaissance painting, who, in his later works, completed the transition to the High Renaissance. Dürer's pictures of men and women from this Venetian period reflect the sweet, soft portrait types especially favoured by Bellini.
In 1506, in Venice, Dürer completed his great altarpiece "The Feast of the Rose Garlands" for the funeral chapel of the Germans in the church of St. Bartholomew. Later that same year, Dürer made a brief visit to Bologna before returning to Venice for a final three months. The extent, to which Dürer considered Italy to be his artistic and personal home, is revealed by the frequently quoted words, found in his last letter from Venice (dated October 1506) to Willibald Pirkheimer, his long-time humanist friend, anticipating his imminent return to Germany: "O, how cold I will be away from the sun; here I am a gentleman, at home a parasite."
Between 1507 and 1513, Dürer completed his "Passion" series in copperplate engravings, and, between 1509 and 1511, he produced the "Small Passion" in woodcuts. Both of these works are characterized by their tendency toward spaciousness and serenity. During 1513 and 1514, Dürer created the greatest of his copperplate engravings - the "Knight, Death and Devil", "St. Jerome in His Study" and "Melencolia I".
In July 1520, Dürer embarked, with his wife, Agnes Frey, on a journey through the Netherlands. In Aachen, at the October 23 coronation of the emperor Charles V, successor to Maximilian I, who had died in 1519, Dürer met and presented several etchings to the mystical and dramatic Matthias Grünewald, who stood second only to Dürer in contemporary German art. Dürer returned to Antwerp by way of Nijmegen and Cologne, remaining there until the summer of 1521. He had maintained close relations with the leaders of the Netherlands school of painting. In December 1520, Dürer visited Zeeland and, in April 1521, traveled to Bruges and Ghent, where he saw the works of the 15th-century Flemish masters Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden and Hugo van der Goes, as well as Michelangelo's Madonna (c. 1501-1504).
Dürer's sketchbook of the Netherlands journey contains immensely detailed and realistic drawings. Some paintings, that were created either during the journey or about the same time, seem spiritually akin to the Netherlands school - for example, the portrait of Anna Selbdritt, a half-length picture of St. Jerome (1521) and the small portrait of Bernhard von Resten, previously Bernard van Orley.
By July 1521, the travelers were back in Nürnberg, but Dürer's health had started to decline. He devoted his remaining years mostly to theoretical and scientific writings and illustrations, although several well-known character portraits and some important portrait engravings and woodcuts also date from this period. One of Dürer's greatest paintings, the so-called "Four Apostles" (St. John, St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Mark), was done in 1526. This work marks his final and certainly highest achievement as a painter. His delight in his own virtuosity no longer stifled the ideal of a spaciousness, that is simple, yet deeply expressive.
Achievements
Albrecht Dürer was an outstanding painter, draftsman, printmaker, theorist and writer, generally regarded as the greatest German Renaissance artist. His vast body of work includes altarpieces and religious works, numerous portraits and self-portraits, as well as copper engravings. However, Dürer established his reputation and influence across Europe, when he was in his twenties, due to his high-quality woodcut prints.
Dürer's most notable engravings include the "Knight, Death and the Devil" (1513), "St. Jerome in His Study" (1514) and "Melencolia I" (1514), the works, that were the subjects of extensive analysis and interpretation. Besides, his watercolours made him one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium.
It's also worth noting, that Dürer gained prominence as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance for introduction classical motifs into Northern art through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists. Moreover, it was Albrecht Dürer, who invented the basic principle of ray tracing, a technique, used in modern computer graphics.
Courtyard of the Former Castle in Innsbruck with Clouds
1494
Linden Tree on a Bastion
1494
Lion
1494
Muse Calliope
1494
My Agnes
1494
Orpheus Slain by Bacchantes, with a Boy Running Away
1494
Prudentia
1494
Fighting Seekentauren
1494
Holy Family
1494
Portrait of a Woman
1494
Rest on the Flight to Egypt
1494
St. Martin
1494
Study of Three Hands
1494
Study Sheet with Madonna and Child, Hand and Sleeve
1494
The Trefilería on Peignitz
1494
Wire Drawing Mill
1494
Young Couple
1494
A Lobster
1495
woodcut
St Jerome
1492
Religion
Dürer's religious beliefs remain unknown, though his iconography shows both Catholic and Protestant emphases.
Views
Quotations:
"Nature holds the beautiful for the artist, who has the insight to extract it. Thus, beauty lies even in humble, perhaps ugly things, and the ideal, which bypasses or improves on nature, may not be truly beautiful in the end."
"Simplicity is the greatest adornment of art."
"If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided, that happens otherwise if one is idle."
"Geometry is the foundation of all painting."
"Love and delight are better teachers, than compulsion."
"Sight is the noblest sense of man."
"Some think, that they know everybody, but they really don't know themselves."
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
Albrecht was described as a handsome and serious-looking young man with a carefully trimmed beard, long curly hair and an intense gaze.
Quotes from others about the person
"The work represents a miracle of observation and it is too ambitious to be merely a preliminary study. Dürer made it as a master drawing to show to visitors in his workshop, as an example of his God-given talent." - Christof Metzger, discussing Dürer's "Praying Hands"
Connections
Dürer married Agnes Frey on July 7, 1494. Their marriage was not a generally happy one, as indicated by the letters of Dürer, in which he quipped to Willibald Pirckheimer in an extremely rough tone about his wife. He called her an "old crow" and made other vulgar remarks. Besides, the couple's marriage produced no children.
It's also worth noting, that one author claimed, that Albrecht was bisexual, if not homosexual, due to several of his works, containing themes of homosexual desire, as well as the intimate nature of his correspondence with certain very close male friends.
Father:
Albrecht Dürer the Elder
Albrecht Dürer the Elder was a successful goldsmith.
Mother:
Barbara (Holper) Dürer
Wife:
Agnes (Frey) Dürer
Brother:
Hans Dürer
Hans Dürer was mostly known as a German Renaissance painter, illustrator and engraver.
Brother:
Endres Dürer
Friend:
Willibald Pirckheimer
Willibald Pirckheimer was a German Renaissance lawyer, author and Renaissance humanist, a wealthy and prominent figure in Nuremberg in the 16th century, as well as a member of the governing City Council for two periods.
mentor:
Michael Wolgemut
Michael Wolgemut was a German painter and printmaker, who owned a workshop in Nuremberg.
References
Albrecht Dürer
Jeffrey Ashcroft's book provides the first English translation of the whole corpus of Dürer's writings; the legal, financial and administrative documentation of his life and work; and what others wrote about him during his life and in the following century.
Albrecht Dürer
This overview of Dürer's entire oeuvre, covering his oil, tempera and watercolor paintings, copper and wood engravings, as well as his drawings and sketches is the perfect introduction to his work.
